3. ikea recently opened a factory in the u.s. too. another reason to be on my "places to buy stuff "

8. Really?

A factory where they will manufacture stuff....right in the USA? One of my son's Hooofenpuffinloomborg (something like that) lamps said Made in the USA on it. I think that's the first time I have seen an American made item at Ikea. Love that store.

Not every company can afford pinball machines and bowling alleys (Google), but they all do take care of their employees in one way or another. Competative wages, perks, benefits, etc... and you end up with industry low turnover, in most cases exponential job growth (compared to the entire economy), and most of all; happy employees, who in turn make for happy and loyal customers. One thing smart CEOs know is that your customers build your brand. Your brand is not something created by a marketing team.

If you look at the list of companies, you will see that above all they have high employee satisfaction ratings. Then you will also see that they are for the most part adding employees by huge numbers in some cases.

I work for a company (not on the list because we did not take part in the survey), that embraces this type of culture. We pay higher than our competitors, we have amazing benefits and because of that we have industry low turnover. Our turnover is so low that in the industry we only lose 1 employee for every 20 to 30 that other companies in the industry lose. Also our logevity (length of service) on average is 9+ years. Personally, my little group of three (including myself) that I supervise has a combined 46 years of service in the company. This I think speaks volumes.

There is a line at the door to get in, and once in, you don't want to leave. We personally only had 3% in job growth recently, however in the coming year with our expansion plans we intend to add 7 to 10%.